Moonshadow
by Scribbler
Summary: [one shot] Post'Ghost of a Chance'. The XMen take Dani home to Dark Hollow, but she has regrets. Femslash. Kindasorta.


Disclaimer – X-Men: Evolution and all characters therein are the property of KidsWB and Marvel Comics. This story is written for fun, not profit.  
  
A/N – Bleh. Written because I have no inspiration and just typed what came to mind. And because the world is in dire need of more second-person fiction. Yessum. Sharp-eyed readers may already have figured out that the title is a play on 'Moonstar'. If you have not heard the Cat Stevens song from which I stole this, then go find a copy and listen to it, heathens.  
  
-------------------  
  
'Moonshadow' By Scribbler  
  
June 2004  
  
-------------------  
  
Your smile doesn't reach your eyes as you hug goodbye. Your seatbelts make it difficult to reach. You say that you will call soon, and she asks for the millionth time whether you have her email address.  
  
You do. It's written on three pieces of scrap paper and in the new mini diary she gave you, all sealed away in your suitcase. Grandpa sent some of your stuff up while you were recuperating, and you recognised the battered brown holdall as yours by feeling rather than conscious memory.  
  
Conscious memory is waking up in a cave, water rising around your ankles, tired and so, so cold you can hardly move.  
  
The landmarks are familiar. On the way into town you passed Chinkawa Pass and Snakeskin Gorge, where Ridge Runner lives. You wonder if the old cougar still roams with her cubs, and remorse sluices through your stomach when you remember that it's been two years since you followed these trails and walked these paths and had your back warmed by this sunshine. Ridge Runner may not even be alive anymore, for all you know.  
  
Some of the landscape is different. There is a reservoir where the ravine used to be. Homes that were destroyed by storms the last you knew have been replaced by houses that are now old. You look at things as you pass, making half-hearted conversation with the people who have brought you here.  
  
Brought you home.  
  
So different; so much the same...  
  
Where is home now?  
  
In dreams. Home is memory and grooming horses and learning to crawl. Home is scent and touch and the feeling of belonging. Home is not bricks and mortar. Home is people and understanding and acceptance.  
  
You could have made your home with the mutants up north. They wanted you to. Professor Xavier was very wordy about it, but the invitation was clear, and even if you hadn't understood, she had been there to put it into small words. You got the feeling you should have been annoyed at her treating you like the hibernation slowed your mind, but she says everything with such genuine cheerfulness that you just can't bring yourself to snap at her. You have a hazy memory of strutting from a room full of olds and snarling, but you think it was something from the dreamtime. She's never mentioned it, though, so maybe you just made it up. The lines between fantasy and reality are so blurred now...  
  
She was upset when you wanted to go home. She tried to talk you out of it, but you were firm. Black Eagle is a tough old boot, but he needs you, and you miss him. And so what if the townsfolk distrust you and your strange abilities? Your place is here, with him, not there, with her.  
  
And so here you are, hugging goodbye and mouthing assurances that you'll stay in touch and she'd better not cry now or she'll get such a smack.  
  
She laughs. She knows you won't raise a hand to her. She saved your life, after all. She believed in you, and came to get you when nobody else remembered you were there. She is your friend, and you are hers.  
  
Except you know that you'll probably accidentally-on-purpose lose her phone number and forget her email address. You know that you might write one or two letters, but then you'll stop and not put pen to paper anymore. You might even throw away the diary she gave you – lose it somewhere on a hike or drop it in the reservoir. You know this, yet you still swear otherwise. You're lying to her and you know it, and you know why you're going to do it.  
  
She is a good friend. She doesn't have to learn friendship from teen novels or idealistic movies; it just flows in and out of her, like air. She /is/ friendship. She is closeness and goodwill and patient sounding board. She knows how to draw people out of themselves; how to make them smile with just the right words. While you were convalescing and confined to bed she brought you videos to watch on the overhead TV. When your muscles were atrophied and too wasted to be of much use she fed you like a baby. She slept in the chair near the bed for the first three weeks, brushing off orders to return to her room and eventually migrating into a cot next to yours. When she had problems she came and confided in you – not the friends she'd known longer, but you.  
  
You learned about the world from her. She told you the deeper science of mutants and public reaction and Sentinels in the same breath as clothes and shopping trips and would you like anything from the mall because Jean was making a list. You listened when you weren't falling asleep from the morphine, and when you were strong enough you nodded and gave advice and asked questions. When she was bursting with news she would confide in you. She told you about the algebra test she'd aced, and the looming Sadie Hawkins Dance. You learned about the someone she used to like and still did even though it was wrong because he was a hood and oh the others wouldn't approve and she felt so stupid liking him after all he'd done but she couldn't help herself and... and... and...  
  
You'd never really had that problem before, but you did your best to comfort her when she cried, and you promised not to breathe a word to the other X-Men. Boys don't look at you the way they look at her. She's small and delicate. She screams 'protect me' without even trying, and yanks masculinity out into the open by its hair, even though she can take care of herself quite well, thank you very much.  
  
You, on the other hand, are scrawny and untidy. Your feet are too big and your thin arms pinch at the wrists. You're gangly and clumsy and too tall for your body mass. Part of you says that this is just the body image you had when you went missing, and that you've grown into your misshapen and too-long limbs now, but you find it hard to believe that. You can't reconcile the gaunt person who came out of the cave with the wholesome thing you saw in a mirror this morning with the scrawny little thing that wandered into the ravine for a hike and never came back.  
  
You're back now. And this last goodbye is hard because it /is/ the last.  
  
You want to stay her friend, but you stop yourself from making that promise. You stop because of the kissyounevereversomuchasmention; the one that happened when she fell asleep leaning on your bed and you shook her arm to wake her up and for that one moment you got too close and it just /happened/. Just like that – a brush of lips so fleeting that it might not have been there at all.  
  
In your mind you're still that scrawny kid who talks to herself and animals more than she talks to humans – the one not totally comfortable in her own skin. Your body has grown up, but your mind is still stuck in that rut and it can't cope with the sudden rush of hormones it's experiencing. So you look at that moment and you wonder whether you should feel something more than you do, because your body started doing all sorts of crazy things and you had to ask her to leave with the excuse that you needed to use the bedpan because you couldn't figure out what was going on.  
  
You're not totally naïve. You know what it is to be gay or bi. You just have trouble accepting that you could be one of them, because it really wasn't that much of a kiss and the last time you were awake your body wasn't even doing that stuff around /boys/, let alone girls.  
  
And besides, you got a sense that she was still partway in a dream when it happened. And even if you do puzzle out your own mental pathways and resolve them with this older body, you know enough that you don't want to be a replacement for the one she can't have. You don't want to play second fiddle to someone whose spectre has so much history with her that you could quite easily drown in it.  
  
You break the hug first, but she grabs your fingers and squeezes, as she asks one last time that you will keep in touch, right? You look down and marvel at how fragile her hands are compared to yours. Yours are large and dark and calloused with hard work. Hers are no less used to work, but they retain an almost aristocratic delicacy. Her fingers are slender, and they lace with yours like they have lives of their own. There is an ink smudge on her left thumb from the leaky pen she used to write the Institute's address in the diary, and you have a sudden urge to clean it off. It ruins the immaculate quality of her, and for some reason you don't want anything to tarnish this moment – even something so insignificant.  
  
You ask if she has a tissue, and she looks at you funny. You realise you haven't repeated your promise to keep in contact, and you gabble the words quickly to smooth over the indiscretion.  
  
She smiles. It lights up her face like the jackpot on a pinball machine.  
  
For a second you think about kissing those Cupid's-bow lips, wondering whether your body would do the things it did before if you did. There is a flutter in the pit of your stomach and you bite your own mouth closed, as if it might leap off your face and fasten itself to hers if you don't keep it in check.  
  
Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid. Scrawny little girls aren't supposed to think about other girls that way – especially not pretty, fragile, feminine girls like her. Not girls that look like they would break in two if you bend her backwards too far, like they do in those romance movies she likes to watch. Not girls who sigh over posters of the newest male totty in Hollywood, and who can brighten the interior of a dreary black van when they smile.  
  
Hell. You ask yourself how you can possibly be thinking these things. You're a good girl. You were brought up nice – brought up right. Black Eagle may not be the most affectionate person in the world, but he did a good job of raising you after the deaths of the parents you never knew. You respect the old ways, just like he taught you, and you never lose sight of your ancestors and where you came from.  
  
The chest you didn't have before is acting like it's suddenly very cold, and you appreciate the loose denim jacket that hides it. You swallow, squeeze her hands one last time, and then turn to open the door.  
  
Once outside you breathe the air deeply. It smells of sand and dirt and that strange almost-cherry of Black Eagle's pipe. A crow caws overhead, and for a second you fancy you can feel it welcoming you back.  
  
He's waiting for you on the porch, and even though he makes no move to descend the steps you can see the thanks in his eyes that you're alive and have finally come home.  
  
Home is people and understanding and acceptance.  
  
He is your people. He is Cherokee. He is you. He understands you and accepts you, just like he has always done. Just as he did when he defended you to the townboys who saw rattlesnakes crawling up their legs when they tried to bully you. Just as he did when he came to visit up north, leaving Dark Hollow for the first time in over twenty years to see you sleep in white sheets and have your hand stabbed with an IV-feed. Vague memories of him stroking hair from your face swim into focus, and all at once you're rushing up the steps and wrapping him in as much of a bear hug as your recovering muscles can manage.  
  
For a second you forget her. You don't think of her laughing blue eyes and fair skin and narrow hips. Instead, your nose is full of your Grandpa's familiar scent and your eyes are full of happy tears because this feels good and familiar and /right/. Being here, hugging him, crying into his frosted hair and some of it going up your nose when you gulp in air. You feel both ridiculous for being so open about your emotions and, more than that, completely and perfectly placed; as if standing there with your arms around his neck where you couldn't reach before was exactly what life had planned for you at this moment.  
  
A sense of nowness crowds into you like an unstopped creek, and for a brief second there is nothing more than the present. The past is gone, the future undetermined, and all you want to do is capture and savour this simple sensation of the here and now.  
  
When you finally let go you're wiping tears from your eyes, so you don't spot her right away. When you do you know that the spell is broken – the now you had is already the past, and the future suddenly seems like more than an undetermined concept. It branches away from you in a billion different directions – so many you can't begin to comprehend them all.  
  
She is your friend, your confidante, possibly your very first crush.  
  
And you wave her goodbye because she's already just another part of the past.  
  
-------------------  
  
FINIS.  
  
------------------- 


End file.
